The Bad Man. Porter Emerson Browne
he could put into his voice. Few women can withstand that age-old phrase.
There followed a time of utter disillusion for her. The great house on the Avenue proved to be but four bleak walls; and when the villa on Long Island was built, she tried to be as enthusiastic as Morgan wanted her to be. He lavished gifts upon her. He brought out gay house-parties for weekends. Lucia did her best to keep her part of a bad bargain. She made herself lovely, and Pell was proud of her physical charms. The jewel was worth the finest settings, and these he supplied, with no thought of the cost. He had someone at the head of his table of whom he was very proud. The world need never know the solemnity of their lives when the curtain was lowered and they were alone together. After all, many marriages were like this. Theirs was by no means an exceptional case; and he experienced a curious secret joy in the fact that he knew other men envied him his wife, and wondered at his power to hold her.
And so the months rolled by, with a trip abroad now and then to relieve the tedium of existence. For a woman to know that she comes to be tolerated only because she is decorative, is a consummating blow. Pell soon reached the point where he told Lucia he had bought her, body and soul. He had determined to win her love. When he saw that he could not, he swiftly forgot the integrity of her part of the bargain, the honesty of her words to him before they were married; and he practised subtle cruelties to tame her and bring her at last to him.
He began to drink too much. Only a certain pride in his business affairs, the desire to keep a level head, a clear brain, kept him from sinking definitely to the gutter. He became irritable with her. Nothing she did pleased him. He found he could not wound her sufficiently when he was sober; so he fortified himself with alcohol, gained courage to speak flat truths, and left her alone for days at a time, thinking such absences were a punishment.
Had he but known it, they were the only bright oases in her monotonous life. She blessed those hours when he mercifully remained away on the pretext of business. What he did gave her little concern.
Once she ventured to talk frankly with him about the wisdom of a legal separation. It was foolish to go on in this way. It was dishonest; it was the only immorality.
He laughed her to scorn. "You're too useful to me, my dear," he sneered. He always added that "my dear" to any statement when he wished to be thoroughly sarcastic.
He was conscious that certain captains of business would not have come so frequently to his home if Lucia had not been there to dispense a supposedly gracious hospitality. Let her go? Lose all this? Not at all! He brutally told her so again and again. And finally she made up her mind, for the sake of peace, that she would merely remain the flower under glass, if that was his desire. Arguments were of no avail. In a sense, she was beaten.
The opera, books, travel, a few good friends—those that Morgan allowed her to keep—these filled her days.
One evening she was particularly surprised when he said to her, casually:
"How would you like a little trip out West? You look peaked. Maybe it would set you up."
"Why—it sounds nice, Morgan," she answered. "Is it business, or—" Her sense of humor made it impossible for her to bring out the word "pleasure."
"Of course it's business," he replied. "Precious little else I get." They were dining alone, at home, and he motioned the butler to refill his glass with champagne.
She wondered at his suggestion. There must be something behind it. But as a matter of fact she was tired of Long Island, and if she could kill a few weeks—maybe a few months—in the West, she would willingly go.
"Sturgis telegraphed me that there was a big possibility of a new vein of oil down on the border," Pell was telling her. "Some important men want to talk things over with me at Bisbee. I want to get started in a day or two. Don't take your maid. It's a rough country, but you'll be all right. Just old clothes. You can ride a lot, so bring your habit. I'll be busy most of the time; but I think you'll like the trip. Never been down that way, have you?"
"No," she said. "And I've always wanted to go."
"Not afraid of bandits?" he laughed, sipping his champagne. "It's right next door to Mexico, you know. Have some swell times down there, they say."
She laughed too. "How exciting," she said. She grew almost jubilant at the prospect of the journey. She knew she would probably be "shown off" to the important men; and that touched her vanity—what little she had left by now.
"They tell me it's God's country, with big chances for everyone. I want to add to our little pile, Lucia," Pell went on. He hoped she would get the significance of the "our."
"You're too good to me, Morgan," she said, and meant it. "But why do we need any more money? We've got everything now."
"Everything?" he said, significantly; and his eyes became two narrow slits as he looked at her.
She toyed with her salad. She hoped he was not going to get into one of his fiendishly unpleasant moods.
"Well," she ventured, "as much as anyone could reasonably want. This house, the garden, friends—"
"Yes," he sneered, "but not much love." The butler had tactfully withdrawn. "Why don't you love me, Lucia?"
"I do—in a way. Oh, let's don't go into all that again, Morgan. We've had it out so many times. What's the use?"
"Is there anyone else?" he asked. "If I thought there was. … " He lifted his glass again.
"You know there isn't," she protested.
He appraised her across the table, beautiful in a blue gown which just matched her eyes, her throat adorned with a string of pearls he had given her on the anniversary of their marriage.
"I don't see how a woman as lovely as you can be so cold," he said. "You could do anything with men."
She tried to smile. "But I don't want to. Women—good women—don't like to play with fire. It's only adventuresses who dare to face danger. … But let's talk about Arizona. How good it will be to get out of this hothouse of the East, and see real people—real flesh-and-blood men and women."
"Yes. The folks down there know more about life in a day than we do in all our pitiful lives. You've got to live close to nature to understand human nature. Simple, isn't it?"
"Very. We're all so false up here. I get so tired of it, Morgan. Maybe down there we'll come to a better understanding of each other. Maybe. … "
"That's what I was hoping. So you'd like to go—really?"
"Yes, indeed. It'll be hot, that's all. But I won't mind that. Anything to get away for awhile."
Two days later they had started. The land was green with early summer, in that rich fullness which makes the heart almost sick with ecstasy. The farther west they went, the wilder the country grew; and when they finally dipped down into Arizona, Lucia looked from the train window, her face alight with joy. Such scenic variety she had never dreamed of. One moment they were looking at the wonderful mesas and superb canyons; the next they seemed to pass through dry gullies and great shallow basins. Then there would come long, weary levels of sand that gleamed in the sun; and far away she would behold tremendous buttes. The valleys they passed through were verdant and lovely. Cattle grazed here in a calm peace. It was as if the rest of the world were shut out, and in this quiet land a special blessing had come down. The peace of it, the stillness of it crowded in upon her. She had been to California, but always she had traveled by a northern route, and had missed the wonder of this part of the world. Before their journey was over, she had begged Morgan to take her to the Grand Canyon; and for two days they remained there, drinking in the glory of perhaps the most beautiful spot on the western continent. She could not get enough of it—those colors that sank into her heart and consciousness and made her think she was in paradise. To see the sun rise here—she almost wept that morning when the lord of heaven came over the mountains that towered like huge sentinels, impervious to wind and gale and rain.
"I can't stand such beauty, Morgan," she said at last.